Combat Thaumaturgy?

[Monkey Bloke]

I recently ran a DFRPG one-shot as a rules and game "feel" test run before we embark on a campaign later, one thing that struck us was using Thaumaturgy in a time-sensitive situation, for example, combat.
The rules say that you can start a ritual up to your Lore without additioal prep, but we could not figure out how long that should take to execute.
The magic chapter talks about it taking "minutes" at best, but with enemies attacking and one player holding them off the Thaumaturgist is setting up a strength 5 ward (his lore is 5).
Basically I let him make a disclipline roll every exchange and it took 2 exchanges to fire up the ward.
This is now a strength 5 ward until sunrise, which seems way better than the equivilant strength 5 block that an Evocator could do while taking stress etc.
This makes me wonder what other evocations a thaumaturgist could replicate quickly which seems out of the spirit of the Evocation/Thaumaturgy split.

Is this correct, or did I misread the rules on magic?


As a side question, when it states enemies can attack the ward to bring it down, does that include weapons scores? When a Hexenwolf attacks the ward, should I be including the Strength and Claws weapon rating in the attack to damage the ward?

[Leatherneck]

One of my players has a Man of Faith with Ritual, specialty of Warding.  I am trying to figure out how to apply his Warding during a conflict.  How long to strengthen a Threshold?  How long to create a Circle?  How to use his ability in an action orientated game?   I am worried he will become too background during physical fights. 

[Ophidimancer]

Is this correct, or did I misread the rules on magic?

I don't think you've misread, but I do think the book leaves things a bit too ambiguous.  I personally don't let Thaumaturgy happen in combat time, and I think that that "at least a minute" even applies to things whose Complexity fall below one's Lore rating.

Your situation where fast Thaumaturgy overpowers Evocation is one result, but there's another consideration.  What's the advantage of Sponsored Magic being able to cast Thaumaturgy "with the speed and methods of Evocation" if Thaumaturgy can do that as a default?

[MyNinjaH8sU]

Honestly, someone racing to get a ritual finished while combat goes on around them sounds like an entire encounter to me. Very classic - defend the wizard while he banishes the evil sort of thing.

 That said, other than that example, the fact of the matter is you sjust shouldn't be able to perform thaumaturgy during a conflict, especially a physical one. As was just pointed out, sponsored magic is important for a reason.

[Becq]

It's left very vague in the rules, and when this has been brought up in the past, there has been a variety of opinions.  All we know is that:

* Thaumaturgy at its quickest (not counting Evocation-speed Thaumaturgy via Sponsored Magic) takes minutes
* You get to make a control roll each 'exchange'
* 'Exchanges' represent a varying amount of time, depending on the pacing of the scene

My take would be that in a firefight or other fast combat, an exchange probably represents no more than 10-15 seconds or so.  Which in turn would mean that a 2 minute 'Thaumaturgy' exchange might translate to 8-12 or so 'combat' exchanges.  So as a default, perhaps the caster should make a control roll every 10 exchanges during the fight.

Obviously, the players might be motivated to speed things up.  Probably the most sensible way of doing this is to allow the player to use 'extra' shifts on the control rolls to reduce the time that control roll took.  The problem here, of course, is that you either need to roll in advance (so you know how much you succeeded by) or the GM needs to make the roll.  There are other options, but this looks reasonably clean to me.

As an example, take the strength 5 ward you mentioned.  The caster needs it up now, so he decides to control all five shifts at once.  Luckily his Lore is 5, which means no preparation is necessary.  Since he has a Conviction of (let's say) 3, he takes 2 stress to summon the power.  Then he rolls his Discipline of 4, and gets a -1, for a total of 3.  Disaster!  But no, the caster quickly points out that he is a "Warden of the White Council" and well versed in such magics.  Spending a Fate point, this takes him up to 5, enough to succeed.  But he needs to speed it up.  So he points out that he was "Trained by Warden Luccio" and spends another Fate.  Still not satisfied, he spends one more Fate, citing that he is "Driven to protect his friends at all costs".  His total roll is now 9, more than he needs by 4.  So the base casting time of ten exchanges drops to six ... though his friends need to keep him from being interrupted until the magic snaps into place...

Again, this is just a possible suggestion, not hard rules.  Hope it helps!

[Morfedel]

Didn't Harry (yeah, we're on a first name basis) perform some basic magic circles, Thaumaturgy, etc, in combat? Albeit it took what appeared the narrative equivalent of several exchanges.

And his apprentice drew that circle around all of binder's critters once, but that was during a "parley"... although, it does seem that circle Harry drew as the pseudo-zombies were rushing them was also a ward.

Hm. Tell me. I haven't.read the rulebook 100% yet. Is the circle drawn with chalk or salt, finished with a drop of blood a Thaumaturgy, or something else? Because that one is so easy anyone can do it

[LCDarkwood]

Oh, the things I wish I could have gotten to in more detail if I'd had just one more draft...

So, Becq nailed the essential problem to the wall - an 'exchange' is how long it takes every character in a conflict to do one significant thing. However, the scale of consideration differs depending on what people are up to. And with thaumaturgy, you have the potential for the scales to be vastly mismatched - completing any part of a ritual cannot, by any measure, happen as quickly as a dude snap-pointing a gun at you and pulling the trigger.

It's already enough of a stretch to include stuff like picking a lock vs. a gunfight, but luckily (read: totally on purpose) for us, the system is mainly designed to model narrative considerations of time, rather than actual ones.

Let me say this about the Lore prep rule: it refers to game time, not story time (see YS p. 314). Just because Harry has enough Lore for the tracking spell, it doesn't mean that doesn't have to prep the spell - he still draws the circle, prepares his symbolic link, blah dee blah. His player just does not have to engage the game's mechanics to declare he has done this.

But all that prep still takes time in the fiction, right? So, my first question when thaumaturgy during a fight comes up is, "How far are you into prep when the bad guys show up?" Because if you don't even have a circle set up when lead goes flying at your head, you can't even start calling power in.

But if you showed up and got your shit together before the attack happens? Sure, call a bunch of power, take your stress, and have your spell up in a few seconds!

So, what I might suggest as the primary avenue of resolution is making spell prep during combat an involved Challenge using Lore, to give you the permission to engage the normal power-summoning mechanics, and then you can pace everything round by round and not mess up your buddies and their gunfight. IOW, decide that the Lore = insta-prep rule only applies under non-stressful conditions, and adjust accordingly.

[Ophidimancer]

Didn't Harry (yeah, we're on a first name basis) perform some basic magic circles, Thaumaturgy, etc, in combat? Albeit it took what appeared the narrative equivalent of several exchanges.

And his apprentice drew that circle around all of binder's critters once, but that was during a "parley"... although, it does seem that circle Harry drew as the pseudo-zombies were rushing them was also a ward.

Hm. Tell me. I haven't.read the rulebook 100% yet. Is the circle drawn with chalk or salt, finished with a drop of blood a Thaumaturgy, or something else? Because that one is so easy anyone can do it

I don't view simple circles as Thamaturgy, I view them as Lore rolls used as a Block.

[Kaldra]

i like that option, i my self was wondering how to model that.

[babel2uk]

Bear in mind that Evocation can also use chalk circles and trappings which might normally be associated with Thaumaturgy as part of the spell, so something may appear to be Thaumaturgy because of the trappings when in fact it's Evocation.

[Morfedel]

I don't view simple circles as Thamaturgy, I view them as Lore rolls used as a Block.

That's a damned cool idea actually!

[babel2uk]

Wouldn't that just be a simple evocation block? Otherwise you're getting all of the effects of an Evocation block at no cost whatsoever.

[tymire]

Just curious would it make sense for simple circles if you added your lore to evoc roll to increase shifts for duration and/or power.  So that way at least taking time to do the circle would provide more benefit than just a basic block.  Ofcourse doing this should probably automatically add an aspect of "sloppy", "rushed", "easily smudged", or "temporary" to the circle.

[Morfedel]

Bear in mind that Evocation can also use chalk circles and trappings which might normally be associated with Thaumaturgy as part of the spell, so something may appear to be Thaumaturgy because of the trappings when in fact it's Evocation.

But was.it.Thaumaturgy or evocation? Based on how the book described it, and considering Harry never had to suffer generating it, and heck, I think we have seen non-practitioners using it, lore actually seems like the most realistic way to do it... geez, it almost seems brilliant to me.

What were the fame designers' intentions for reflecting this anyway?

[tymire]

Actually that isn't quite true.  First time Harry did it he explained exactly what he was doing.  Circle of chalk/salt, a drop of blood, and finally the key part the "WILL".  Actually based on Changes, an entire circle could be done completely without any prep and done completely in the mind, however doing it with the items makes it much easier.  When it's required to add WILL or the entire idea doing the entire ritual in the mind just screams mental stress.